Forum Post: OccupyTheConstitution National Opinion Collection System

This web page is provided to discuss the National Opinion Collection System itself. The excerpt from LIARS! Vol. 2: Escape to Insanity which originated this concept is at http://A3society.org/NatOpinionColSys .

In short, the widest possible collection of citizen views on specific topics is collected from across the country and ORGANIZED for everyone to see. A tally is kept of how many people support each point of view. Besides citizens, specialized groups could also chime in. The views of these groups would not be counted in the "citizen" count. There could be many of these ranging from local organizations to appropriate trade groups, political groups and colleges. The point being, it would soon become clear how the public felt about any issue without relying on any authority that had to be policed to enforce that they tell the truth.

But what gives NOCS its novelty is the following combination of new elements:

1. The survey or "vote" is intended to be comprehensive across the population, providing access to EVERY U.S. citizen.

2. Each submitted viewpoint is linked back to its source with a public/private identifier. These are somewhat like user names. The viewpoint is publically identified with the public identifier. The public cannot identify the source from that identifier. But the owner of that identifier can find and identify their comments using the identifier. A protected process can also trace comments back to sources to insure that they are from the person associated with the identifier.

3. A non-partisan professional process using "transparent" rules, is used to consolidate views.

4. A fidelity checking process is used to insure unbiased categorization. This is done by publishing gazettes where citizens can verify that their viewpoint was accurately captured.

5. NOCS will become the primary method for legislators to gather public opinion or take votes in the process of constructing laws under Direct Democracy.

So, please take a look at the details of this new process and provide suggestions to make it work and improve it.

(This post is part of a collection of posts aimed at launching a new process called the National Opinion Collection System (NOCS). For more information on the process, see http://occupywallst.org/forum/occupytheconstitution-introduction/ )